I’m going to be blogging some of the great articles that appeared in Joel’s nominations for best of 2004. Daring Fireball: Ronco Spray-On Usability by John Gruber is one such article. The gist of the article is that usability is, in fact, important work and not something to toss in as an afterthought. He picks on Eric Raymond’s article on Linux usability. I’ve read ESR’s article and it was interesting, but I think that Gruber is spot on when it comes to the real problem and the basic lack of a solution. I’ve had a really hard time figuring out who would actually use Yellow Dog Linux. Why would you want to replace Mac OS X, which is Unix with a solid, consistent GUI, with Linux and all of the stuff that entails?
Be sure to also read the followup.
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December 7th, 2004 at 9:19 pm
Gruber is misinterpreting the point esr is making in a quote that is actually included in Gruber’s blog article.
esr’s point was this:
“the problem is that these simple things never occurred to developers who bring huge amounts of already-acquired knowledge to bear every time they look at their user interfaces.” - esr
If a person does not have the actual programming experience or some academic HCI knowledge with which to interpret the meaning of the concept esr illustrates succinctly above, then it might be difficult to sway this person’s opinion with actual reality.
Gruber’s retort is a little defensive don’tcha think?
“Oh, I see: the problem is that Linux developers are just so fucking smart that they overlook the problems faced by “dumb users” such as dear old A.T. But everything will fall into place with just a little attitude adjustment.” — Gruber
So, there is nothing intellectually momentous to read in that opinion piece.. Move along. Go to esr’s Linux Usability article and read that for time better spent.
December 7th, 2004 at 9:45 pm
Certainly, Gruber’s article is self-serving in much the same way that Alan Cooper’s “The Inmates Are Running The Asylum” is. Gruber wants to ensure that UI designers remain in high demand and are not devalued.
However, I still think he has a valid point. Open source software that is largely created by individual folks scratching their respective itches does not tend to be very good on the usability scale. Most developers have an itch to make a program that either (a) does something they personally want, or (b) is something they find cool. Consequently, usability falls off to the side.
The notable exception to this comes from software that has some actual money involved to bring on some full-time staff. I’m sure there are also some programs that are worked on by folks who have a good innate sense of usability or that have attracted the interest of a UI designer.
I did read ESR’s piece when it first appeared on /. I decided that Gruber’s article was worth blogging because ESR’s article glossed over the real problems of bringing usability to most open source tools.